2010 review | Plategate
The magistrate, her lover, and crockery of the newsmaking kind.
Arguably the most sensational story of 2010 and one that broke all boundaries between the confines of privacy and public interest. Scorned lawyer-husband files police report of medical injuries sustained in missiles of the Royal Doulton kind during domestic fall-out that shatters the Bidnija torpor.
Said aggressor turns out to be Daphne Caruana Galizia, columnist, publicist, defender of all causes Nationalist and pointy elbows, and judgmental dispenser of prejudice and social castigation.
On the other side of the island, a magistrate is hosting a dinner party where she conveys her gloat and pleasure to her guests (some of which are of the journalistic persuasion) that MaltaToday would run with that most excellent incident of domestic violence.
DCG responds with alacrity of the blogging kind, unveiling the most sordid of Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera’s secrets both past and present, her marital troubles, her new life with Siggiewi mayor Robert Musumeci, and cringeworthy pictures of Herrera’s summer birthday party.
Her weapons of social destruction leave hundreds of casualties behind: journalists, people on Facebook, people who knew Herrera and Musumeci, those with original sin and bereft of the perfection of her loving sons.
DCG’s plategate hits headlines on l-Orizzont instead; Scerri Herrera files libel charges claiming DCG ran an assassination campaign on her blog; Malta is enveloped in gossip and mystery on the sex lives of the judiciary and the earthenware upon which Caruana Galizia’s posh nosh had once been served. Country lives to tell the tale.
Peter Caruana Galizia’s injuries heal. A new consignment of plates arrive. Bidnija wildlife returns to enjoy its hibernation.